Army suicide rates declined 9% in 2011

Official links 1st decrease in rate in 4 years to a major campaign

by Gregg Zoroya - Jan. 19, 2012 10:54 PMUSA Today

Army suicide rates declined for the first time in four years in 2011, the result of a complex effort to identify soldiers engaged in risky or self-destructive behavior, the outgoing vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, said Thursday.

"I think we've at least arrested this problem and hopefully will start to push it down," Chiarelli said, citing additional numbers showing an increase in hospitalizations for soldiers who talk of suicide. "For all practical purposes ... it has leveled off."

But he said there also remain second- and third-order effects from a decade of war and multiple deployments, including a sharp rise in sexual assaults and child and domestic abuse in the Army.

"We see these problems, we see where we've had successes. And we're attacking those areas where we've got problems," Chiarelli said. "After 10 years of war ... we had problems that no one could have forecast."

Suicides among active duty soldiers and those in the National Guard and Reserve who are not on active duty fell by 9 percent last year from from 305 deaths in 2010 to 278 in 2011.

It is the first good news on suicide for the Army since those deaths began a steady increase among active-duty soldiers in 2004. Still, the suicide rate in the Army, estimated at 24 per 100,000 last year, remains far higher than a similar demographic among civilians, estimated at 19 per 100,000. The rate among soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan ranges even higher, up to 38 per 100,000, the Army says.

As the increase continued, Chiarelli was appointed in 2009 to look at underlying causes and began a campaign of targeting risky behavior across the service, demanding more accountability from commanders.

According to a trend analysis released Thursday, the number of soldiers kicked out of the service for misconduct increased by 57 percent since 2006, and the Army did away with accepting convicted felons on special waivers.

The result was to bar from enlistment or muster out about 40,000 potential people in that time, according to the report. Overall crime is down. The number of soldiers committing multiple felonies has dropped.

But with alcohol abuse in the Army at record levels, sexual assault and domestic violence have increased.